Mingpao published an article in its 2018 government work report delivered at the People’s Congress Conference of Guangdong Province which ended on Wednesday, January 24. According to the article there was no mention of the plan to achieve its poverty goal in 2018. The Guangdong provincial government body established the poverty goal back in 2015 after the Central Committee Political Bureau passed a “Decision on Winning the Tough Battle against Poverty.” The goal was to win the battle by 2020. The article reported that in 2015 Guangdong put pressure on itself and vowed to achieve the poverty goal by 2018, two years earlier. At the end of 2017, it gave up trying to achieve the goal due to personnel changes and a lack of experience in dealing with poverty issues. Xi Jinping also directed, during Lianghui in 2017, that the poverty deadline set by the central administration is 2020 and that the local municipal governments should be realistic and shouldn’t casually change the poverty deadline themselves.